


Old Guard Askbox Fic

by gallifreyburning



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Askbox Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:15:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29112885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/pseuds/gallifreyburning
Summary: Just a place to post all of my short Old Guard tumblr askbox fic. I'll update the rating and tags as I add content.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	Old Guard Askbox Fic

Going to do these together, since they overlap. Tysm, [@timelordsandkittens](https://timelordsandkittens.tumblr.com/) and [@babydillpickle](https://babydillpickle.tumblr.com/)!

> _Fic Prompts:_ 31 - Lost in the middle of nowhere 6 - “Do I love you? Yes. Do I like you? That’s still up for debate.” 20 - “Don’t tell me what to do.”

* * *

“Darling, slow down! You’ll burn out the solar battery and we’ll have to wait for it to recharge again.

Nicky pulls the steering wheel sideways, a little harder than is strictly necessary to avoid the red-orange boulder that was hidden by a fold of the dusty landscape—the thin atmosphere on Mars plays havoc with perspective, and he isn’t used to it yet. The buggy swerves hard right and back again, fishtailing in the gritty sand.

“Fuck,” Joe hisses, his voice tinny in Nicky’s helmet speakers, his gloves tightening on the roll bar in front of him as he tries to keep his seat. “Nico, I said slow down!”

“I don’t want to be late,” Nicky replies, icy calm. His visor is beginning to steam over, though, the little air recycling fans inside his pressure suit working overtime to prevent condensation from collecting and ruining the integrated electronics. “And don’t tell me what to do. You’re the last person I’m listening to today.”

“You can’t blame me forever,” Joe says. For the first time since they left Earth, Nicky is glad that his helmet restricts his peripheral vision, and that he can’t see Joe’s face right now. He’s in the mood to be angry, but one look at those enormous dark eyes, glittering brighter than the stars, and he’ll forgive Joe anything. Joe continues, “The landing telemetry was complicated, and once the guidance computer glitched it wasn’t—”

“Four hours you worked on those numbers. Four hours! And half of your calculations weren’t calculations at all—they were verses!”

“A villanelle about you!”

“Beautiful me, and the beautiful moon, and beautiful Mars, and we missed our landing site by a beautiful two hundred kilometers!” 

“Yes, well, waxing poetic about the heavenly bodies is certainly a far sight easier than navigating them.” There’s a soft tap on Nicky’s shoulder, muted through layers of insulation and radiation shielding and oxygen-rich air, as Joe nudges him affectionately. His hands are still on the roll bar, which means he tipped himself sideways to bonk Nicky with his helmet, even though Nicky can’t turn his head to see. “Quynh and Nile will have landed their pod safely, I’m sure. And Booker will have done a fine job keeping his mouth shut and staying out of their way. You’ll get us to their landing site, and we’ll be together soon enough.”

Nicky harrumphs, even as his anger is already evaporating. Something about being on solid ground, enjoying some degree of gravity again, makes it difficult to stay angry for too long. 

“Although _as_ we consider landing telemetry, I think it’s also important that we remember you’re the reason we’re here in the first place,” Joe continues, a little too cheerfully. “If it hadn’t been for the incident you and Booker kicked off, we’d have never been forced into the colony ship in the first place.”

“Yusuf, I have decided I am still in the mood for poetry,” Nicky says, swerving the buggy again as he shoves his space-booted foot harder on the accelerator. Joe swears again, and he continues, “Do I love you? Yes. Do I like you? That’s still up for debate, _caro_.” 

For a moment, the only sound over the helmet speakers is a grunt as the buggy hits a rock the size of a speed bump, and Joe tightens his grip on the rollbar again to keep from bouncing off into the Martian landscape.

“For the record, Nico, that was a very sloppy haiku,” he finally replies.


End file.
